John Erskine (educator) - Life and Career

Life and Career

Erskine was born in New York City, New York, the son of Eliza Jane (née Hollingsworth) and James Morrison Erskine. Professor Erskine was an English professor at Columbia from 1909 and 1937, and Amherst. He instituted Columbia College's General Honors Course, a two-year undergraduate seminar that would later help inspire "Masterworks of Western Literature," now known commonly as "Literature Humanities," the second component of Columbia College's Core Curriculum. This course taught the classics in translation instead of the original Latin or Greek. This course would later go on to inspire the Great Books movement, centered on the Great Books of the Western World.

In 1946 he served as the first chairman of the American Writers Association.

Erskine co-wrote the 1900 Varsity Show, The Governor's Vrouw, with poet Melville Cane. He won the Butler Medal in 1919.

Erskine Place, a street in the New York City borough of The Bronx, was named after him.

Erskine was also the author of numerous publications, including several humorous novels retelling myths and legends. These included The Private Life of Helen of Troy, Penelope's Man and Adam and Eve, Though He Knew Better.

Erskine also wrote the libretto for George Antheil's opera Helen Retires, which was based on The Private Life of Helen of Troy.

To commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of Roger Bacon, Erskine wrote A Pageant of the Thirteenth Century, a biographical play which was produced at Columbia University and published as a book by Columbia University Press in 1914. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of his papers.

With his wife, Pauline (Ives), he was the grandfather of actress Lindsay Crouse and the great-grandfather of actress Zosia Mamet.